Students, faculty and staff at Sacramento State now have the latest in computer technology at their fingertips inside the new Academic Information Resource Center.

The four-story, 100,000 square-foot ARC, located just south of the library, houses several new computer labs for students, faculty and staff.

In addition, the ARC contains the Computing, Communication and Media Services, which provide technological support on campus from how to open a SacLink account to removing computer viruses.

The main computer lab, which is equipped with over 90 desktop workstations and 10 laptop workstations, is located on the second floor of the ARC in room 2005. The lab is open seven days a week.

The main computer lab is also fitted with group tables with four desktop computers at each table.”Our experience has been that often times several students want to gather around a single computer,” said Arthur Buntin, University Computing and Communications Services lab manager. “With the group tables there is room available for several students to gather around a single computer and work together.”

The lab also has five smaller rooms within it furnished with scanners, memory card readers and DVD burners.

Scott McGown, manager of desktop services, said the entire ARC building is equipped for wireless Internet access and for wireless printing.

“People can sit in any of the public seating areas on the first thru third floors and access the Internet using their laptop,” McGown said. “There are nice lounge-type chairs and tables.”

The original plans for the ARC called for a 24-hour student computer lab, but McGown said when the university implemented a 24-hour computer lab several years ago they found that the costs far outweighed the benefits for students.

“Each time a student logs into the system it gets recorded and then we get usage statistics,” McGown said. “We never had enough usage to justify a 24-hour lab.”

So instead, funds to maintain 24-hour service were redirected for more staffing, McGowan said.

McGown said CCMS redirected the funds being used for the 24-hour lab to other areas to ensure that labs and adequate staff were available to students when they would actually be using them.

In addition to the main lab, there are four discipline-specific computer labs located on the first floor of the ARC: One 42-station lab for the Business Administration Department, two 30-station labs for the Computer Science and Engineering Departments and a 72-station lab for the Nursing Department that is equipped for laptops. Discipline-specific labs are run by the individual departments and will be utilized primarily for classroom instruction.

Dave Hill, director of University Computing and Communications Services, said the first floor of the ARC is also equipped with two studio classrooms and three “origination spaces.”

The origination spaces are small classrooms equipped to allow an instructor to teach four or five students in the physical classroom and stream video over the Internet or through cable television. “Having the students there allows the instructor to get visual feedback so they know what they are saying is being understood,” Hill said.

Directly across the hall from the main computer lab in Room 2005 is the University Help Desk, which moved to the ARC from Sequoia Hall on July 25.

Brad Grebitus, manager of the University Help Desk, says the move was “seamless” and the University Help Desk continued to provide all their normal services during the move. Those services include: help with SacLink e-mail, Web CT, removal of spyware and viruses, SacNote, dial-up Internet services, Casper, List Proc and wireless Internet access.

Grebitus said the University Help Desk had approximately 10,000 visits to their counter during 2004.

“We expect the number of people utilizing the help desk to increase due to the lab across the hall,” Grebitus said.

Hill said the University Help Desk has about five times more space than it had in its old location in Sequoia 322.

“Because of the added space, we were able to set it up so we could serve multiple people at the same time,” Grebitus said.

The third floor of the ARC houses the Faculty/Staff Resource Center, which features two faculty and staff training rooms equipped with computer workstations, a smaller computer lab strictly for faculty and staff use, as well as rooms equipped with video-editing equipment to allow faculty and staff to transfer video from VHS to DVD.

Allan Darrah, an assistant professor of anthropology, came to the FSRC last Monday seeking help accessing a Web site for a course he is teaching this fall.

Though it was the first time Darrah had visited the ARC, he said “the facilities are fantastic.”

Helping Darrah was Steve Faghih, an FSRC consultant, who said the new facilities were much nicer than their old location in Sequoia Hall.

“It’s like night and day,” Faghih said. “My only complaint is that our office is in the middle of the building, away from the windows.”

Hill said the ARC is also equipped with a new type of air-conditioning system.

“The whole building has raised floors with little air-conditioning vents mounted in the floor,” Hill said. “Bodies are cooled from the floor, rather than from the ceiling. The system is designed to cool the people, not the space.”

The original impetus for building the ARC, Hill said, was to bring together the university’s main telephone switch and the university’s main data center. Prior to their moves to the ARC, the telephone switch was located in the basement of Capistrano Hall and the data center was located on the third floor of Sequoia Hall.

“The telephone switch was in a precarious position due to the possibility of flooding, the data center didn’t have adequate room for personnel or to provide services and both didn’t have an adequate uninterrupted power supply,” Hill said. “They were in conditions that were rife for catastrophe.”

McGown said the ARC was designed with the security of this technology in mind, so the power and backup power are housed on the fourth floor.

“Why that is important is for reasons of security,” McGown said. “There is always the danger of flooding from rainstorms and the river nearby.”

Ron Richardson, interim vice president of Facilities Management, said construction of the ARC cost $17.5 million and took nearly two years to complete. The ARC construction was funded mainly through Proposition 1A, an initiative passed by California voters in 1998 that provided $9.2 billion in bonds for educational facilities.

Chason Wainwright can be reached at [email protected]